Stories of Your Life and Others


Book Description

From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival




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Dear Life


Book Description

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE© IN LITERATURE 2013 A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction A Best Book of the Year: The Atlantic, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, AV Club In story after story in this brilliant new collection, Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate. Her characters are flawed and fully human: a soldier returning from war and avoiding his fiancée, a wealthy woman deciding whether to confront a blackmailer, an adulterous mother and her neglected children, a guilt-ridden father, a young teacher jilted by her employer. Illumined by Munro’s unflinching insight, these lives draw us in with their quiet depth and surprise us with unexpected turns. And while most are set in her signature territory around Lake Huron, some strike even closer to home: an astonishing suite of four autobiographical tales offers an unprecedented glimpse into Munro’s own childhood. Exalted by her clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, Dear Life shows how strange, perilous, and extraordinary ordinary life can be.




Hope Heals


Book Description

When all seems lost, where can you find hope? Katherine and Jay Wolf married right after college and sought adventure far from home in Los Angeles, CA. As they pursued their dreams--she as a model and he as a lawyer--they planted their lives in the city and their church community. Their son, James, came along unexpectedly in the fall of 2007, and just six months later, everything changed in a moment for this young family. On April 21, 2008, as James slept in the other room, Katherine collapsed, suffering a massive brain stem stroke without warning. Miraculously, Jay came home in time and called for help. Katherine was immediately rushed into brain surgery, though her chance of survival was slim. As the sun rose the next morning, the surgeon proclaimed that Katherine had survived the removal of part of her brain, though her future recovery was uncertain. Yet in that moment, there was a spark of hope. Through forty days on life support in the ICU and nearly two years in full-time brain rehab, that small spark of hope was fanned into flame. Hope Heals documents Katherine and Jay's journey as they struggled to regain Katherine's quality of life and as she relearned to talk, eat, and walk. As Katherine returned home with a severely disabled body but a completely renewed purpose, she and Jay committed to celebrating this gift of a second chance by embracing life fully, even though that life looked very different than they could have ever imagined. As you uncover Katherine and Jay's remarkable story, you'll be encouraged to: Find lasting hope in the midst of struggle Embrace the unexpected Welcome God's miracles into your everyday life In the midst of continuing hardships, both in body and mind, Katherine and Jay found what we all long to find: a hope that heals the most broken place--our souls. Let Hope Heals be your guide along the way. Praise for Hope Heals: "As I read this book, tears streamed from my eyes even as joy flooded my heart. Jay and Katherine are a raw yet refreshing testimony to the unshakable trustworthiness of God amidst the unimaginable trials of life. This book reminds all of us where hope can be found in a world where none of us know what the next day holds." --David Platt, author of the New York Times bestseller Radical and president of the International Mission Board "Hope Heals is a beautiful, true story that illustrates the love and protection God has for us even in the darkest times of our lives. Katherine and Jay's dedication to each other and the Lord through their most devastating season is inspiring. This book will help your heart believe that He sees, He knows, He cares, and He is still working miracles today!" --Lysa TerKeurst, New York Times bestselling author and president of Proverbs 31 Ministries




I Will Never Give Up


Book Description

This is the inspiring true story of my life. I was a 5 year old foster kid who eventually found light at the end of the tunnel. I have fought for my existence. I have lived a life in which abuse, loneliness, and dark nights of despair rattled the very bones of my body, drained the tears of my spirit, shattered my mind into a million fragments, and left me for awhile plodding through life as an empty shell, a lost and helpless soul. I have breathed the air of the unloved, and suffered deep psychological and spiritual wounds due to abandonment at an early age by my mother and father. I have blamed myself for a past over which I had no control. My trust in people was displaced with hostility and anger. And yet, my spirit would not be broken. I have fought for survival in the name of love, powered by a dogged will whose voice never stopped telling me to NEVER GIVE UP! I would like to share my story with you so that you may be determined to win life's battles and finally have peace with your past.




Life Is Short and Then You Die


Book Description

Life Is Short and Then You Die is the Mystery Writers of America's first teen anthology, edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong. Adolescence is a time of “firsts.” First kiss. First love. First loss. First job. The first taste of adult responsibilities, and the first look at an independent life away from both the restrictions and the security of home. And in this case, a very different type of “first”: murder. This short story collection of murder mysteries adds a sinister spin to the joy and pain of firsts that have always been a major part of life, whether it be high school cliques who take the term “backstabbing” too seriously, stumbling upon a body on the way home from school, or receiving a Snapchat message that promises something deadly. Contributors include Barry Lyga, Caleb Roehrig, Emmy Laybourne, Jonathan Maberry, R.L. Stine, Rachel Vincent, Y.S. Lee, and more! An Imprint Book




Best Short Stories


Book Description

New edition features 7 of the most popular tales of one of the greatest of all short-story writers. Included are "La Parure," "Mademoiselle Fifi," "La Maison Tellier," "La Ficelle," "Miss Harriet," "Boule de Suif" and "Le Horla," all reflecting Maupassant's intimate familiarity with Paris and the universality of his creations.




Like Life


Book Description

From the national bestselling author of Birds of America comes “a brilliant collection” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) of eight exquisite stories of men and women stumbling through their daily existence. In Like Life, Lorrie Moore’s men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can’t quite understand how they arrived at their present situations. Harry has been reworking a play for years in his apartment near Times Square in New York. Jane is biding her time at a cheese shop in a Midwest mall. Dennis, unhappily divorced, buries himself in self-help books about healthful food and healthy relationships. One prefers to speak on the phone rather than face his friends, another lets the answering machine do all the talking. But whether rejected, afraid to commit, bored, disillusioned or just misunderstood, even the most hard-bitten are not without some abiding trust in love.




Short Stories Are Not Real Life


Book Description

In these fourteen beautifully crafted stories David R. Slavitt shows his mastery of the form. Elegant, spare, sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac—this collection reflects a writer in admirable control of his craft. The title story (complete with footnotes á la The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction) braids together the tidy conventions of fiction and the brutal reality of New York as a writing teacher ponders s student’s sexually explicit story that may—or may not—be autobiographical. In “The Impostor” a writer’s brother exploits the legerdemain of fiction in a series of ever-bolder impersonations. Several of the stories are presented by emotionally wounded narrators, disillusioned men looking for a hint of grace in a world where expectations are frequently doomed to disappointment. In such a world only one thing is certain we will hurt—and be hurt by—the ones we love. And in the vacuum left when traditions that might have been redemptive have lost their meaning, “punishment gets to be a habit, a way of life, or at least something to hold onto.” The stories pivot on nuance, on the half-realized insight, on “some perfectly innocent and insignificant insight, on “some perfectly innocent and insignificant gesture that turns round and grows into a medium-to-large awkwardness.” We find what the divorced father futilely awaiting his daughter’s visit in “Hurricane Charlie” calls “dabblers in distress”: lonely, decent people trying to discover where love—and life—went. In “Simple Justice” a man striving for some definitive family memory compares the process to archaeology: “The shards that remain are pathetically small and almost grudging.” Thus through the faltering memory of an elderly cousin in “conflations” a man becomes a kind of incarnation of his own father and for a moment finds himself at the “vanishing point” where a lost past meets an unknowable future; in “The long Island Train” a simple anecdote becomes a metaphor for the opacity of the most apparently transparent human intentions. Yet it is often these shard of tradition and memory that seem to hold our only promise of transcendence. The protagonist of “Grandfather,” for example, through his reluctant participation in his grandson’s bris, finds a moment of reconciliation with a past that has broken loose of its moorings. Even the most experimental of these pieces—“Instructions,” a list of admonitions ranging from the quotidian to the cosmic—shows a deep humanity and a maturity of vision that steers adeptly between humor and despair. These stories will linger in the reader’s memory long after the book is closed.